Trapped at the Altar

“Move aside,” he said finally, lowering the sword stick and sheathing it. “You have played your part, Ariadne, and now you will go home and wait for me. We have a long night ahead of us.”

Still, she hesitated, and he said very quietly, “Do not compel me to move you aside.”

Ari stepped away from Gabriel, hearing his sharp, fearful intake of breath as he found himself facing Ivor unshielded once again.

“Go back to the house. Now.”

“I’ll go. But you won’t . . . ?” She left the question hanging.

“This is my business now, and you will leave it to me,” he stated. “You’ve made enough unilateral decisions for one lifetime. Now, get out of here before I really lose my temper.”

She looked at him askance, hearing herself say absurdly, “You mean you haven’t?”

“Oh, wife of mine, you do not want to be in my vicinity if I ever really lose my temper,” he assured her, his eyes still on the silent and quivering Gabriel.

She took him at his word, but with a final touch of stubborn defiance, she first turned back to Gabriel and lightly grazed his ashen countenance with her fingertips. “Farewell. You will find someone more worthy of your love, Gabriel. I know you will.” And then, sensing Ivor move behind her, she pushed through the shrubs and hurried back across the park, alert to the dangers around her, her knife in her hand, her ears stretched to catch every rustle and crackle of the frosty ground.

The lights of the house shone as she emerged from the park, and she ran up to the front door and banged the knocker. When Tilly opened the door, Ari ran past her upstairs, her eyes blinded by tears of exhaustion and the fearful knowledge that her marriage hung in the balance. What was said and done in the long hours ahead would determine whether she passed the rest of her life in lonely unhappiness or safely in the arms of the man who held her heart, the only man she could ever truly love.





THIRTY





Ivor stood unmoving until he was certain Ariadne was out of earshot. Then he said almost conversationally, “So, Master Poet, how long have you and my wife been consorting behind my back?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Consorting? No, no, I beg you to believe me. We have been doing no such thing. I came to London to find her. I saw her at the theatre . . .” He put a hand convulsively to his throat, where the bead of blood still welled against his lace collar.

“Here.” Ivor handed him his own handkerchief. “You’ll not die of blood loss, I can safely promise you.” He regarded his erstwhile rival with a touch of puzzled contempt. What on earth had Ari seen in this whey-faced creature? He was her very opposite in every respect. But perhaps that was his answer, he thought. He waved away his bloody handkerchief as Gabriel tried to return it to him.

It was long past time to unravel this treacherous thread that had entangled his marriage from the beginning. Ari’s lone efforts had clearly not been successful. They had simply tied more knots in the thread. “Do you love her?”

Gabriel scrunched the handkerchief into a ball in his fist. “I have loved her since I first saw her on the cliff top,” he muttered. “She is perfection.”

Ivor gave a sharp crack of laughter. “How little you know her, my friend. Perfection is the last word I would use to describe my fiercely independent, headstrong warrior of a wife. Believe me, you and she would not suit. She would trample you into the dust, without meaning to, I grant you, before you knew what had hit you.”

Gabriel was beginning to sense the truth in these words as he thought of Ari with her knife drawn, facing down her sword-wielding husband, but he held his tongue. The acute danger seemed to have passed, but he felt that his wisest course was simply to answer this terrifying man’s questions as truthfully as he knew how and venture nothing of his own.

“So, does she love you, do you think?” Ivor asked, his expression revealing nothing as he waited for an answer to this all-important question. He thought he knew the answer, but his own belief wasn’t sufficient to convince him. He needed confirmation from the only other person who would know the answer.

“She says not,” Gabriel admitted. “But she did love me. We loved each other.” Finally, he risked looking his interlocutor in the eye. “She says she does not love me anymore.”

“And do you believe her?” Ivor still spoke without expression.

Gabriel wanted to shout to the heavens that she did love him as he loved her, she just needed to be reminded, but his tongue was still as those intense blue eyes seemed to bore into his skull.

“Answer me.” The rasped command was enough to bring his fear flooding back.

Slowly, Gabriel nodded. “I believe her.” It was said in an undertone.

“Very well.” Ivor concealed the surge of joy he felt at this simple statement. He had thought it, but he hadn’t known it absolutely. He took Gabriel by his thin shoulders and looked down at him, fixing him once more with his penetrating, intense blue gaze. “You will not show yourself at court again, Master Fawcett. I care not what you do or where you go, but if I ever see you in the vicinity of my wife again, I will not be so gentle with you. Is that understood, sir?”

What would constitute an ungentle Ivor Chalfont? Gabriel wondered. He was still trembling inside from the supposedly gentle treatment over the last half hour. He took a deep, steadying breath and slowly nodded, finally relinquishing the dream that had informed his life for the last weeks. Ariadne Daunt was not for him.

“Go home, Master Poet,” Ivor said with a note of compassion now. “Ariadne is too bright a sun for you. She would have singed your wings long since.” He turned away, leaving Gabriel still standing in the little clearing, and walked back to his wife.

? ? ?

Ari heard the front door bang shut. She heard his footsteps and saw the latch lift on the door to the small parlor, where she waited. She stood with her back to the fire, feeling its warmth against the backs of her legs.

Her husband came in, closing the door behind him. Deliberately, he turned the key in the lock and then looked at her as he unclasped his cloak, tossing it aside. “So, madam wife, we will have some truth spoken at last. How many times have you spoken with Master Fawcett since we arrived in London?”

She shook her head. “Just twice.”

“I am to believe that?” He sounded incredulous. “You have been as jumpy as a scalded cat for days, and you expect me to believe that had nothing to do with your lover’s presence?”

“Gabriel is not my lover,” she declared. “You have to believe that, at least. Yes, I have known he was in London for a few days. I saw him for the first time in the piazza when we went to the theatre. He has been following me ever since. I did send him a note, asking him to meet me, but I have spoken to him only to tell him it was over and he must leave.”

“And you chose to keep this a secret,” he said flatly. He walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of brandy from the decanter.

“I thought . . . oh, dear God, I no longer know what I thought,” Ari said helplessly. “I know how you felt about him. You haven’t exactly kept it a secret. And I thought it best to deal with it myself. I would see him, end it, and you would be none the wiser, and we could continue in harmony.”

“I accept that your feelings have changed for your poet, but that is no longer the issue. In fact, it ceased to be many weeks ago.” He spun around to look at her. “Why, Ariadne, did you not confide in me? If you had told me that he had entered your life again, we could have dealt with it together. If you truly had no feelings for him any longer, there was no reason to keep his reappearance to yourself. Can’t you see that? Instead of honesty, you chose to creep around behind my back, violating my trust again.” He took a draught from his goblet and turned to refill it.